Nanostructures such as nanotubes, nanocrystals, and nanowires have gained a great deal of attention for their interesting and novel properties in electrical, chemical, optical and other applications. Such nanomaterials have a wide variety of expected and actual uses, including use as semiconductors for nanoscale electronics, optoelectronic applications in emissive devices (e.g., lasers, LEDs, etc.), light collectors, photovoltaics, and sensor applications (see, for example international applications PCT/US03/09827 filed Mar. 1, 2003, PCT/US03/09991 filed Mar. 1, 2003 and PCT/US03/27846 and co-filed herewith; PCT publication WO 03/005450; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,230,957; U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,000; U.S. Pat. No. 5,990,479; U.S. Pat. No. 6,198,655; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,207,229).
While commercial applications of the molecular, physical, chemical and optical properties of these materials have been postulated, generating commercially viable products has not, as yet, been forthcoming. In the world of devices with integrated nanostructure elements, some of the difficulties in producing commercially viable products has stemmed from the difficulty in handling and interfacing with such small scale materials. For example, existing nanocrystal-based photovoltaic device technologies suffer from inefficient charge transfer from the nanostructure surface to the electrode of the photovoltaic device. One limiting factor in the electron/hole transport is the degree of nanocrystal packing and ordering. For the most part, the nanostructures are produced in bulk as free-standing elements that must be positioned and/or oriented within the photovoltaic device, a task which has proven difficult. While a variety of procedures for making nanostructures are available, current technologies are insufficient to produce selectively-oriented or arranged arrays of nanostructures.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for non-randomly oriented nanostructures and/or non-randomly-arranged nanostructures, as well as methods for preparing non-randomly oriented or non-randomly dispersed nanostructures, for example, within a matrix. The present invention meets these and a variety of other needs. A complete understanding of the invention will be obtained upon review of the following.